Adalah, the NIF and BDS: End the secrecy

NGO Monitor brought to NIF's attention that one of their major grantees was scheduled to speak at this year's "Apartheid Week.”

311_BDS UK.
(photo credit:ALESSANDRO ABBONIZIO / AFP)

‘Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” This adage might have
occurred to the officials, donors and supporters of the New Israel Fund (NIF)
when they learned that an official from Adalah – one of their major grantees –
was scheduled to speak at this year’s “Apartheid Week” at an event sponsored by
BDS Geneva.

Suhad Bishara, the director of Adalah’s Land and Planning
Rights Unit, was featured prominently in the publicity for the event. After NGO
Monitor brought this to NIF’s attention, Bishara’s name and affiliation were
removed from some of the advertising, and was replaced by a statement reading,
“For security reasons, we do not mention [the speaker’s] name on the
site.”

NIF officials should not have been surprised by Adalah’s ongoing
role in promoting BDS (boycotts, divestment and sanctions) and other forms of
political warfare. The organization has made no secret of its agenda, including
the participation in the infamous NGO Forum of the 2001 UN Durban
Conference.

The NGO Forum’s “Final Declaration,” which is still posted on
Adalah’s website, calls for the “complete and total isolation of Israel as an
apartheid state.”

Expanding on this theme, Adalah’s so-called “Democratic
Constitution” (2007) called for replacing the Jewish state with a “democratic,
bilingual and multicultural” framework and for a redefinition of the “symbols of
the state.” Jewish immigration would be restricted solely for “humanitarian
reasons.”

And following the publication of the Goldstone Report, Adalah
joined Palestinian NGOs in urging governments to “re-evaluate their relationship
with Israel.”

Such activities are in direct contradiction of NIF’s
recently adopted funding guidelines and principles, which explicitly exclude
groups that “work to deny the right of the Jewish people to sovereign
self-determination within Israel” and other forms of anti-Israel demonization.
But for some reason, the NIF funding for Adalah – $475,950 authorized in 2010 –
has continued.

For many years, the organization has had trouble
implementing “red lines,” and in a number of cases, has been embarrassed and
forced to backpedal before taking action. In 2004, the NIF awarded a fellowship
to Shamai Leibowitz, who went to the US and promoted BDS, among other activities
inconsistent with NIF’s declared objectives. (Last week, a current NIF fellow,
Moriel Rothman, noted in an op-ed, “I have become deeply frustrated by the
political manipulation of the Holocaust to distract from Israel’s crimes against
Palestinians.”) NIF also provided seed funding for a radical NGO known as ICAHD,
which violates nearly all of NIF’s guidelines and principles, only ending
funding after the damage had been done.

More recently, it took two years
for NIF to finally end support for the Coalition of Women for Peace (CWP), which
is centrally involved in the BDS campaigns. Another group – Mada al-Carmel –
which is also a major source of delegitimization and advocates for a “one-state”
solution, was still listed in NIF’s latest published budget (for 2010), although
incoming president Brian Lurie has stated that the funding has now ended. In
each of these cases, NIF did not make any public statement warning others not to
repeat the mistakes, and seems to have learned no lessons, which is apparent in
the case of funding for Adalah.

Although, or perhaps because, NIF is an
extremely powerful political institution, with an annual budget of over $30
million, whose policies and activities affect the lives of all Israelis, its
leaders are out of touch and very slow to react. The organization’s inability to
properly monitor its grantees’ activities creates an environment ripe for major
mistakes, which have been very costly for Israel.

When the contrast
between NIF’s promotional claims and the reality of its political activities and
funding is noted, they lash out angrily. For an organization claiming a “liberal
and progressive” agenda, the NIF is particularly hostile to any form of
criticism. When caught, as in each of the examples cited above, NIF’s public
relations team resorts to vicious personal attacks against whistle-blowers for
“speaking truth to power.”

This was also the case with Adalah’s scheduled
role in the Apartheid Week event in Switzerland. When NGO Monitor sent a letter
to NIF officials to bring this to their attention, the response was a public
attack accusing NGO Monitor of “smearing” the organization and attempting to
deflect attention from Adalah’s false “apartheid” and “racism”
rhetoric.

The “fool me” adage stops after the second occurrence, but NIF
is now well beyond this. And the personal, vindictive attacks are
unconstructive, to understate the case, creating a contentious
relationship.

Instead of lashing out, NIF has the opportunity to
demonstrate that its guidelines are serious.

Given the extensive public
evidence of Adalah’s true agenda, if NIF chooses to not sever ties with the NGO,
one would have to assume that NIF is knowingly being fooled and is happy to go
along for the ride.

The writer is president of NGO Monitor, a
Jerusalem-based research institution dedicated to promoting universal human
rights and to encouraging civil discussion on the reports and activities of
non-governmental organizations, particularly in the Middle East.

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